The Sunday Telegraph - For 10 years, the Foreign Office has been trying to appease the Iranian regime. As Jack Straw has admitted, it was at Teheran's behest that the Foreign Office put the leading Iranian dissident movement, the PMOI, on the EU's list of proscribed terrorist organisations. When in December this was ruled by the European Court of Justice to be both wholly inappropriate and illegal, our Government again led the way in insisting that the Council of Ministers should simply put up two fingers to the court's ruling and to EU law.

The Sunday Telegraph - The ruthlessness with which our Government enforces EU law against its citizens strikingly contrasts with its eagerness on occasion to flout EU law itself. One of the murkier chapters in our foreign policy in recent years has been the Foreign Office’s readiness to appease the dictatorial regime in Iran, for reasons not unconnected to a series of huge trade deals.

{mosimage}On 19 June 2006, the Home Office published the ‘Report on the Operation in 2005 of the Terrorism Act 2000’ by Lord Carlile of Berriew, QC (the government-appointed independent reviewer of terrorism legislation). At paragraph 43 of his report, Lord Carlile stated, “There is some concern that the UK government occasionally is inflexible in its attitude to changing situations around the world, with reference to proscription. An example of this is the Iran opposition group commonly known as the PMOI." (continues ... )